A topless protester of the radical feminist group Femen interrupted a news conference by Quebec’s culture minister at the National Assembly on Thursday afternoon.

The protester shouted “No to Bill 20!” and “My uterus, my priority!” before being taken away by security guards.

She was arrested and released from custody, Sûreté du Québec spokesperson Sgt. Anne Mathieu said. She might face a charge of committing an indecent act in a public place.

It is not because Gaétan Barrette doesn’t have a uterus himself that he gets to decide that humans who do are secondary

Women’s groups have argued that Bill 20 would limit access to abortion, but Quebec Health Minister Gaétan Barrette has said it would lead doctors to perform more services, including abortions.

Femen Canada took credit for the protest in a statement on their Facebook page: “We are outraged: it is not because Gaétan Barrette doesn’t have a uterus himself that he gets to decide that humans who do are secondary.”

The protester entered the assembly by posing as a journalist and obtained media accreditation from the legislature’s press gallery. She claimed to be representing a French cultural magazine called Next.

Jacques Boissinot/Canadian PressA topless Femen activist is carried out of the legislature visitor section by security after protesting the presence of the crucifix inside the legislature in Quebec City on Tuesday, October 1, 2013.

Her one-day press pass identified her as Neda Topaloski, the same protester who disrupted a debate in the House of Commons last month to denounce anti-terrorism legislation, Bill C-51.

It was the first time she has applied for a press pass at the assembly, gallery clerks told the Montreal Gazette.

In October 2013, three young women interrupted question period at the National Assembly by baring their breasts and shouting from the legislature’s gallery in protest of the crucifix hanging over the Speaker’s chair. Femen Canada took responsibility for the incident.

A topless woman protesting the Conservative government’s anti-terror bill was ejected from the House of Commons on Monday during a discussion about honouring Vietnamese refugees.

The protester, Neda Topaloski with the Canadian wing of the international Femen movement, was in the sitting in public gallery, with two guards standing nearby on either side of her, she said. One of the security guards stepped out briefly, so seeing an opportunity, she took off her shirt. The officers gave chase and Ms. Topaloski ran about the gallery, screaming: “C-51 is war on freedom.”

Then Liberal MP Joyce Murray tweeted that a “tattooed, bare-breasted young” protester had been dragged out of the House of Commons.

Ms. Topaloski only has a “tiny” tattoo on her arm. She thinks the MP was referring to “C-51 State Terrorism” written in bold black letters on her chest.

As Ms. Topaloski was carried out, the in-house camera stayed fixed on the startled parliamentarians. So no footage of the incident surfaced Monday, making it largely a disappointment for Ms. Topaloski’s Femen — which thrives on photos of their trademark topless protests appearing in the media.

“It was a miscalculation,” she said. “I thought it would be better to do it in the morning because then it would be in the news all day … But there was no media.”

“It is really a shame that that image of a woman resisting and fighting the power and the order without shame didn’t make it.”

An RCMP spokesperson said officers issued a trespassing notice and did not lay charges.

“They took me in a corridor and a few policemen came to talk to me,” said Ms. Topaloski. “I’m not allowed to come back on Parliament Hill for a year.”

“[The government is] using the real threats of terrorism to excuse and justify their own methods of repression that are much bigger,” she said.

Femen Canada has previously disrupted the Quebec National Assembly with its brand of topless protest, but had yet to make it inside the Parliament buildings in Ottawa. Last Spring, Ms. Topaloski was photographed crashing an anti-abortion demonstration on the Parliament Hill grounds.

The boobs are at it again. This week the group FEMEN staged a topless protest over the Quebec Charter of Values in the provincial legislature. Three women stripped and demanded that the crucifix in the National Assembly be removed and consigned, as one of them scrawled on her naked torso, to a “heritage museum.” The women were ejected, the crucifix remains, and the images — blacked out in the English media, uncensored in the French (there’s a whole other column on cultural differences that begs to be written) — now sit on the internet for posterity.

Much as the Charter of Values is repellent, this type of stunt is a bust. Like Slutwalks, in which women dress like, well, sluts, to protest rape culture, using nudity to protest discrimination against women — whether by the church, the police, or the construction worker down the street — does not advance female equality. Sure it gets attention, but — like Miley Cyrus straddling a wrecking ball in the buff — it’s not for artistic merit, or the “message.”

The reality is (according to my completely unscientific poll of five male friends), men simply like looking at naked women. Preferably attractive naked women, but that’s of course in the eye of the beholder. And they don’t care about the context: any situation without clothes will do. Naked women also get the attention of the media (again, Ms. Cyrus, step on down!) who know that men like looking at naked women, and figure pictures of them will draw viewers or readers to their site.

But don’t take my word for it. A recent documentary “outed” the fact that FEMEN’s founder is actually … a man. According to Australian filmmaker Kitty Green, Victor Svyatski thought that topless women would be a great way of getting attention from the press: “It’s his movement and he hand-picked the girls. He hand-picked the prettiest girls because the prettiest girls sell more papers.” In Green’s documentary, Ukraine is not a Brothel, Svyatski derides the FEMEN protesters as “weak,” and when asked whether he started the organization “to get girls,” replies: “Perhaps yes, somewhere in my deep subconscious.”

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From beer to furniture rentals, female sexuality is used to sell all manner of consumer products. When advertisers cross certain lines, like a recent Easyhome flyer which featured a woman in underwear and goalie pads under the tag line “Score with 0% interest”, they can provoke a backlash. Most of the time, however, Bud Lite girls and their kin romp across our TV screens with impunity, and most women simply ignore them, desensitized as we are to these types of images.

Human rights, however, are not a consumer product. When rights collide — such as freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and the equality of men and women — there are forums to debate and discuss these issues that don’t involve bare body parts. It is both ironic and pathetic that these women stripped in front of the first female Premier of Quebec. Love her or loathe her, Pauline Marois did break the mold for aspiring female politicians in the province, and she did it with her clothes on.

Reuters / FilesIf studies show the surgery to fix high blood pressure is safe and effective and is applied widely, the operation could prevent many strokes and heart attacks, said Dr. Barry Rubin, medical director at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre

Protesting the objectifiction of women by objectifying oneself is hypocritical. It telegraphs the message that sexuality is the only way women hold real power, which is the the exact construct feminists are supposed to oppose. It constitutes the “pornification of protest”, in which it seems that the only way to get attention is to take off one’s clothes.

But while that attention may make headlines, it won’t make headway on the real issue: How do you balance competing rights in a multicultural society? How do you ensure respect for freedoms and for equality? It’s not boobs we need to figure this out, but brains.

FEMEN is quickly becoming one of the most recognized and least understood activist groups in the world. That’s the unfortunate consequence of its using the bare breast as the primary method of communication. The trademark of the group — which concerns itself often, but not exclusively, with women’s issues — is one of topless, screaming women, usually with black messages scrawled across their chests. The legibility of those messages rarely makes it past the pixilation process.

FEMEN protesters have shown up diplomatic meetings between European leaders, Sunday sermons at Saint Peter’s Square and, most recently, Quebec’s National Assembly. For the latter spectacle, FEMEN was hoping to convey a message against the proposed Charter of Quebec Values, which would ban religious symbols in the province’s public service. FEMEN protesters took aim at the hypocrisy of the crucifix being slated to remain in Quebec’s National Assembly with the words “Crucifix décâlisse” (Crucifix, get the hell out) written across one activist’s chest. That gripe, at the very least, is a legitimate one.

It’s unfortunate, then, that FEMEN’s message is so often overshadowed by its method. A scan of the faces of onlookers at FEMEN outbursts reveals amusement at best and exasperation at worst. Russian President Vladimir Putin was not perturbed, for one, by an attractive young FEMEN protester surprising him in the German city of Hanover earlier this year. For Putin, it was a great show. Models at Paris Fashion Week last month were less enthused to see topless FEMEN protesters crash their runway, but the stunt still seemed to entertain the audience at the show, as well as 16-year-old boys across the world who, for the first time, actually took an interest in Paris Fashion Week.

FEMEN crashed the Nina Ricci fashion show, according to the FEMEN Facebook page, to protest the “exploitative fashion industry,” which it called a “dirty male business.” Paradoxically, however, much of the water cooler discussion about the stunt after the release of photos was of how the FEMEN activists were just as attractive, if not more, than the clothed models. The images were ogled, not understood.

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FEMEN supporters may point to this superficial reception as further evidence of the notion that women are seen as sex objects in European and North American societies. Maybe so. But the onus is on FEMEN, not its audience, to make sure that its message is getting across. A screenwriter can’t leave all the drama to the final 20 minutes of his movie, and wonder why audience members are leaving midway through the show.

FEMEN also seems to suffer from the same self-destructive patterns that lost Occupy Toronto and similar Occupy protest groups — especially in Canada — much of their support. By the time Occupy Toronto was forced to evacuate St. James Park in Toronto in 2011, for example, the group purported to be against everything from corporate greed to environmental neglect, the 1%, Rob Ford, joblessness, Stephen Harper, aboriginal injustices, corporate tax breaks, Zionism and Richard Nixon. At the end of the protest, no one knew what the group was about — and more importantly — what it wanted. The same is quickly becoming true for FEMEN.

FEMEN’s activists have protested against Ukrainian corruption and purported Russian dictatorship, along with the Charter of Quebec Values and the North American fashion industry. FEMEN has also demonstrated against legalizing prostitution, “bloody Islamist regimes,” the Catholic Church, legislation against abortion and the imprisonment of members of the Russian punk group Pussy Riot. FEMEN, thus, is all about a little bit of everything, which has the effect of telling bemused spectators absolutely nothing about what the group seems to accomplish.

In that way, FEMEN is very much like your drunk cousin at a Christmas party, who “jushts” wants to tell you why Obamacare is a mess and about “that damn Tom Mulcair” and why that Middle East might be a good place to summer when the people there stop killing each other. The message is disjointed and muddled by three scotches, but you can still appreciate the show. FEMEN puts on a good show, too.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/robyn-urback-femen-puts-on-a-good-show-thats-all/feed0stdmuzzed2Dominique Charriau/Getty Images‘They were even seen as terrorists': Why people seem to hate activists, but not what they stand forhttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/they-were-even-seen-as-terrorists-why-people-seem-to-hate-activists-but-not-what-they-stand-for
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/they-were-even-seen-as-terrorists-why-people-seem-to-hate-activists-but-not-what-they-stand-for#commentsFri, 27 Sep 2013 23:44:38 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=369967

As topless Femen protesters steal centre stage at Parisian fashion shows and Greenpeace scales Russian oil rigs, earning widespread chagrin, University of Toronto PhD candidate Nadia Bashir has asked the obvious question: Why do people dislike activists so much? In a paper published last week by the European Journal of Social Psychology, Ms. Bashir, herself clearly sympathetic to activist causes, said that even she was taken aback by how negatively feminists and environmentalists are viewed. The Post’s Jen Gerson spoke with Ms. Bashir on Friday.

Q. So what were people’s perceptions of activists, feminists, environmentalists, that kind of thing?

A. They were perceived as militant, aggressive, forceful, argumentative and abrasive. In the case of environmentalists, they were even seen as terrorists. Feminists were angry ball busters, people who are very masculine, people who hate men. Also, eccentric, hippies, odd, disheveled or unclean. For feminists; manly, hairy.

Q. Why did you decide that this topic was something you wanted to study?

A. My research focuses on why people are so resistant to social change. People are willing to say they support gender equality policies or environmental initiatives, but they don’t want to label themselves as feminists or environmentalists.

A. Yeah, the fact that these people have blatantly negative views of activists may actually be hindering the message. People don’t want to be seen as environmentalists or feminist, so they don’t engage in behaviours or adopt the opinions that are characteristic of these people. They don’t want other people to view them in the same negative way. When the message comes from someone who isn’t conforming to these stereotypes, then people are more receptive of the message.

Q. So feminists, for example, who wore moderate, feminine style clothing and came across as softer and more stereotypically feminine might ironically have better luck at getting their message across?

A. We definitely don’t want to send a message with this paper that activists need to change, because it’s not necessarily the case that activists are militant or eccentric, it’s just that people are perceiving them that way. But there is some value to activists in considering that people do perceive them negatively and maybe they do need to tweak their strategy a bit to take into consideration the way they’re coming across to people.

Q. But if you look at other activists — the gay movement, for example, this is a movement that’s gone from relative obscurity to mainstream acceptance over the course of a generation. No one could say gay activists were retiring or mainstream. Does your thesis hold true even when you look at something like gay activism?

A. It depends. There’s such a range of people involved in these types of movements. It’s hard to pinpoint whether it’s the more militant people who are driving the changes that are happening, or whether it is the people who are more mainstream.

FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty ImagesFemen activist on the Seine river in Paris Friday during a protest in support of 22 crew members of a Greenpeace ship in pre-trial detention in Russia.

The biggest shock of Paris’s spring-summer 2014 fashion shows came on the otherwise calm and gentle Nina Ricci catwalk, when two topless activists from protest group Femen crashed the podium.

Grabbing a startled model making her way down the catwalk, they screamed “fashion fascism,” with words decrying the sexualization of the modeling industry written in make-up. One had “Fashion dictaterror” scrawled on her naked torso, the other “Model don’t go to brothel.”

One British model, Liverpool-born Hollie-May Saker, was caught in the middle, with the protesters brushing against her lamé-and-lace skirt.

AP Photo/Jacques BrinonThe protesters make their move on the Nina Ricci catwalk

Dominique Charriau/Getty ImagesSaker spies the protesters

Saker, 18, told the Liverpool Echothat she heard screaming as she walked down the catwalk.

“The next thing I just see half-naked women with black marker pen scrawled across their bare chests and that’s when she came at me….As she grabbed my arm she lifted my skirt exposing me – I pulled my arm back with such force that I landed a punch square on her nose,” Saker told the Echo.

“I was so angry but I knew I had to be professional so I carried on walking with a bit of sassiness. My Scouseness [Liverpool background] came out a bit but I wish it had come out a bit more. Thinking about it now I wish I’d pushed them both off the stage because they ruined my favourite show.”

However, video of the incident shows Saker landing more of an arm-twist as she walks by, rather a punch.

Joel Saget/AFP/Getty ImagesSaker stalks off

The shouting protesters were quickly bundled off the stage by a burly, suit-clad security guard.

A statement on Femen’s Facebook page said “FEMEN sextremists stormed the runway….to condemn the anti human industry of fashion.”

“This way FEMEN protest against exploitative fashion industry with its beauty standards.Women sacrifice their private life and health for this dirty male business, that seeks to exploits women in every possible way. FEMEN calls for necessarily quick attack on fashion dictatorship as one of main development of sex-industry and beauty standards for women. We threat all PIMPs and fashion dictators by our bare breasts attack.”

The historic French brand Nina Ricci, founded in Paris in 1932, is known for its softly romantic, ultra-feminine clothing and one of the world’s most famed perfumes, L’Air du temps.

OTTAWA – The nation’s capital caught a glimpse of the FEMEN movement Thursday as three Quebec teens ripped off their shirts on the steps of Parliament Hill in support of women’s rights.

As a scandalized youth-group leader shepherded her young charges away from the half-nude protesters, the teens shouted “Freedom for women!” and “Free Nathalie Morin!”

Photos courtesy Durocher FamilyNathalie Morin, is in Saudia Arabia with her husband and 3 children. She says that the Saudi government has put her children on a 'black list' and she can't take them back to Canada.

Morin is a Montreal woman who says she is trapped in Saudi Arabia. She moved there in 2005 to be with her Saudi husband and now says the Saudi government won’t issue passports to her three children. The Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development has previously told reporters that consulate officials in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia are assisting Morin while respecting the Saudi legal framework.

The topless protesters said the Canadian government should be doing more to bring Morin home and believe that if enough people know about the woman’s plight they will pressure the government to do exactly that.

And how better to raise awareness, they thought, than to have young women bare their breasts in public?

“If we were just three of us there with our shirts on, it wouldn’t do anything,” said 18-year-old protester Julie-Anne Beaulac.

Beaulac is a proud FEMEN supporter who believes women can make political statements and fight for social equality by displaying their breasts in public. She’s a member of the new and growing FEMEN Quebec group, which formed last fall. The group is part of the international feminist movement, characterized for topless protests in Europe, that kicked off in Ukraine five years ago.

Xenia Chernyshova, the woman who founded Quebec’s FEMEN chapter, said topless protests are controversial but effective.

Jochen Luebke/AFP/Getty ImagesA topless demonstrator with a message on her back walks towards Russian President Vladimir Putin (left) and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, right, during their visit to the Hanover industrial Fair.

“It’s a form of protest to actually have attention,” Chernyshova explained. “We’re using the same strategies as show business and by doing that we can reach more people.”

Chernyshova said she knows some people gawk simply because she’s half-naked, but said they at least see the slogans she waves on posters and paints on her body. Even if people think she’s crazy, at least she gets her messages out, she said.

Chernyshova brought FEMEN to Canada last October when she paraded topless through a Montreal IKEA to protest the fact that women were being airbrushed out of the company’s Saudi catalogues. A YouTube video of the event shows the curvy blonde woman sauntering between display furniture while brandishing a poster that reads “Women are still here.” A pair of frazzled security guards eventually escorts her from the building.

Chernyshova organized a topless protest outside the Tunisian consulate in Montreal this spring to show support for an imprisoned Tunisian FEMEN activist, and she made national headlines last month when she interrupted a speech by the former Tunisian prime minister, Hamadi Jebali, by jumping onto a Montreal stage and ripping off her shirt.

“We need to find ways to shake people,” she said.

Though FEMEN does not yet have a huge following in Canada, Chernyshova said more people are becoming aware of how effective this form of protest is and that the movement has the potential to spread across the country.

For feminist activist Michelle Meagher, who teaches women’s and gender studies at University of Alberta, the prospect is both “exciting” and “intriguing.”

She said that when women take their shirts off in public, they both draw attention to their messages and also help “recode” the image of women’s bodies as political agents instead of sexual objects.

“For the last 20 years, feminist activism has been too tame and it doesn’t get heard at all,” she said. “There are a lot of young women who will be excited by the energy and the enthusiasm of FEMEN.”

Xenia Chernyshova tore her shirt off and stormed a Montreal stage on Saturday, interrupting a speech from Hamadi Jebali, the former Tunisian prime minister and current secretary-general of the country’s ruling Islamist party. Online footage shows Ms. Chernyshova shouting “Free Amina” before being knocked to the ground by angered audience members. Ms. Chernyshova — who leads the new Quebec wing of international feminist group Femen — was protesting the imprisonment of Tunisian Femen member Amina Tyler. Since 2008, Femen has gained notoriety for topless protests, notably an April incident involving Russian President Vladimir Putin. Post reporter Jake Edmiston spoke on Monday to the Ukraine-born Ms. Chernyshova, who came to Canada in 1998 at the age of 12:

How did you get onto the stage undetected?
I was actually surprised that I could get up so close. I just waited for [Mr. Jebali] to be alone, then I jumped onto the stage, got topless and that’s it.

What was going through your head right before you climbed onto the stage?
I just knew I needed to do that. I was scared, of course. But I don’t care about that. It’s something in your belly.

Why topless?
It’s a way to actually say, “My body is mine.” It’s not like my breasts are sexual. My breasts become political. My breasts can disturb a conference, an event, a meeting. Especially when you do it in front of Islamic people, it makes them angry. It’s a way for women to actually have a voice. If I were in my clothes and just yelling stuff, nobody would pay attention to me. They’d say, “She’s hysterical.” With my breasts, maybe I’m more crazy. But it has an impact.

Let’s talk about that kind of attention. Do you worry the attention isn’t directed towards your cause, but to your tactics instead?
Of course I’ve thought about it. But in Quebec, I’m happy because nobody disapproves. They don’t talk about my body. They talk about the people I defend. I think it’s because Canada is an open-minded country. Everybody has been paying more attention to the fact that people were violent towards me.

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You said your nudity can spark anger. From the YouTube video, it looks like it did. What happened after you stormed the stage?
People in the audience just jumped on the stage. They didn’t even want me to go away. They wanted to teach me a lesson. Like, ‘How could you, a woman, do something like that? Just shut up. It’s not your place.’ Their emotions spoke more than their brains, you know?

What did they do, exactly?
They pulled my hair and they were pushing me. But there were other younger Tunisian guys who also jumped on the stage and defended me. When I saw that, I felt that I didn’t need to do any crazy stuff. I didn’t need to defend myself. I just said, ‘‘Fine, I’m going to go away.’’ For me, I don’t want to be violent and aggressive.

You were ushered off the stage and into another room. What happened next?
People were still very aggressive. They threw things at me — bags, whatever they had near them. Then I got into the room and I was safe. Actually what happened after was the former prime minister couldn’t go on. There was big tension and he couldn’t go on with his speech.

What do you think your protest achieved?
I hope people are going to talk about Amina and the three other [protesters imprisoned in Tunisia] because nobody in Quebec knew about it. It also shows that there’s some Islamist presence in Quebec. And yes, some guys can still be very violent to women in Canada. For many people in Quebec, they couldn’t believe that. We know violence is everywhere, but in front of everybody at a political conference? It was kind of a shock to many people.

YouTubeA screen grab from the Femen protest of the Tunisian speech in Montreal.

Were you expecting that kind of violence?
Yeah, that’s why I had a guy with me.

I saw him in the video, standing by the stage with his shirt off. He was swarmed as well. What exactly happened?
They punched him. He was bleeding, but not a lot. Things happened so fast and there were a lot of people there trying to stop any violence.

What’s the connection between Femen and Amina Tyler?
When she saw Femen’s actions, she decided to do the same this — protest topless. But for an Arabic woman, it’s very dangerous to do that.

You’ve said her affiliation with Femen has put Ms. Tyler in danger in Tunisia. Do you feel the continuing protests in her name are helping or hindering her situation?
I think about that a lot. But the thing is, nobody ever told her what to do. After she posted [topless photos] on Facebook, Femen wanted her to come to France. Everything was planned for her to come to France. But she decided to write “Femen” near a cemetery [and was reportedly detained and charged for holding a can of pepper spray]. But she’s not going to stop. She’s not scared. So I think our protests can help her, because without it, nobody would know.

You’ve been a topless protester since opening a Femen chapter in Montreal last year. How did you get involved with this international feminist group?
Last summer during the student protests in Montreal, there was a concern about politics more than ever. Some friends of mine would just send me links about Femen in Ukraine. And I thought, ‘‘Oh my God, there are feminists in my country.’’ So I went back to Ukraine, and we learned that [Russian feminist punk rock group] Pussy Riot were arrested. I had just met Femen and they asked me to come to the protest where [Femen organizer] Inna Shevchenko cut down a crucifix in Kiev.

Earlier this week, two protesters affiliated with FEMEN, a Ukranian-based feminist protest group, surprised Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the German city of Hanover. FEMEN only has one trick up their notably absent sleeve: Attractive young women write slogans on their chests and back and bare their breasts in public. This attracts attention to the women, and thus, so the logic goes, to their cause. The incident in Hanover fit this pattern to a T.

Unfortunately for FEMEN, however, President Putin found a way to steal the show back, and he made FEMEN look stupid in the process. The damage done to FEMEN may be fatal.

FEMEN identifies itself as a radical feminist group. They object to the sex trade, to political or religious groups that oppress women, and to oppression of gay rights. Their stunts have been well covered in global press, but it’s an open question whether FEMEN is a serious and effective activist movement, or, frankly, a fad. The media, in general, treats them seriously. But it’s far from clear that the public does.

FEMEN itself, of course, takes itself very seriously. In the words of a founding member, and one of the women who stripped for Putin, Alexandra Shevchenko, “When a woman’s nudity is not controlled by men, when she’s not using it to entertain men, or to give them sexual satisfaction or advertise men’s products – when she’s using her sexuality for her own aims, political aims – that really makes patriarchy irritated. And you can see the result.”

Problem: The result from the Hanover protest could indeed be seen, and it wasn’t irritation.

The photo (above) tells the tale. As the two women charge his entourage, Putin looks … delighted. Asked later for his thoughts, he was succinct: “I liked it.”

Direct hit.

Not only is Putin amused by the whole affair — and activists are notoriously lacking in senses of humour — but he’s also missed the memo about FEMEN not wanting to entertain men or give them sexual satisfaction. He saw boobs and he’s thrilled about that. FEMEN’s entire arsenal of tricks is thus rendered useless.

FEMEN isn’t happy about that, of course. “Putin is a bastard,” was the eloquent response from Shevchenko. “The president of a European country would never say something like – I like her, in such a sexual way. He does it because he’s a stupid man.”

Perhaps. It’s certainly true that under Putin, Russia has slid backward into autocracy, and Putin has serious human rights abuses to answer for. He is an entirely legitimate, even deserving, target of protest. But Shevchenko is more right than she knows when she huffs that no leader of a European country would react the way that he did. And that’s the problem with FEMEN: Its shock tactics work best in politically correct countries where they’re least needed. Polite, civilized societies may be unsettled by angry slogans written across bare breasts, but in the countries where human rights are weakest and women most oppressed, the whole thing comes across as an amusing absurdity, at best.

Whatever power FEMEN had was invested it in by the politically correct discomfort of Western leaders when presented with anything controversial or, especially, sexual. That’s not going to work on Putin, a guy who poses for pictures (while topless himself, no less) of animals he shot, to show off to his own people how macho he is. Indeed, Putin has now given voice to what a lot of people probably feel inside — even though FEMEN often targets worthy causes with their protests, their tactics are, well, silly. They don’t help their cause by getting naked, and can actually hurt it. Putin has laughed at them, and that’s made him more powerful.

FEMEN should perhaps have learned from PETA’s example. The animal rights group also had a habit of sending naked, attractive young women out to protest the fur trade or the consumption of meat. A few years ago, I saw a picture of such a protest, with a cheeky young man, with a hell of a belly, standing next to the women, also topless, eating a massive hamburger. Ketchup and relish were dripping onto his ample chest. It was hilarious, and I’ve never been able to view a PETA protest in the same way again.

FEMEN may find itself similarly marginalized. Putin, for all his many serious flaws, has discovered their weakness. When presented with nude protesters, enjoy the show, and say so. They have no response to that.

Vladimir Putin might have “liked” the topless feminist protester who confronted him with an obscene slogan daubed on her back, but she is less than impressed with him.

Alexandra Shevchenko, 24, who stripped in front of the Russian president as he toured a trade fair in Hanover alongside Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, told The Daily Telegraph that he was “really stupid.”

“Putin is a bastard. If you’re a normal person you have to be against him,” Shevchenko said. “The most important [criticism] for us is human rights, the rights of women, this situation with Pussy Riot. Of course we don’t want to say this is all he’s done – he has committed a lot of other crimes.

“When I was running at him we were looking at each other’s eyes,” Shevchenko said. “He was very, very surprised and thinking in this moment, thinking he will do something with his security. It is their mistake.”

Shevchenko is one of the founding members of Femen, a feminist group that campaigns against the sex industry.

Topless protest – I think this is the only effect that can work

“Topless protest – I think this is the only effect that can work,” she said. “This way of protest is being used by women all over the world. In new countries, in Mexico, in the US, in Brazil, France and Germany.”

She added it was a matter of control.

“When a woman’s nudity is not controlled by men, when she’s not using it to entertain men, or to give them sexual satisfaction or advertise men’s products – when she’s using her sexuality for her own aims, political aims – that really makes patriarchy irritated. And you can see the result.”

Although the women have been released, German authorities have not yet decided if they will face charges.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/the-feeling-isnt-mutual-topless-protester-hits-out-at-bastard-putin-after-russian-presidents-ogling/feed3stdA topless demonstrator with a message on her back walks towards Russian President Vladimir Putin (left) and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, right, during their visit of the Hanover industrial Fair Monday.JENS WOLF/AFP/Getty Images